boot performance of windows vista

i'm an impatient person with computers.  i wasn't always this way.  i remember when you could watch the output of the dir command (i don't know in the first version of dos whether the /p was even available because i certainly didn't need it).  i now expect to be able to see a thumbnail of the thousands of photographs in my collection instead of just the filename and with search i have spent less and less time organizing files, email, photos, etc. than i used to.  storage costs have fallen so low, it's a better use of my time to just archive than try and weed through photos, email, music files, etc.

 yesterday at a windows vista hands on lab, the group mentioned three reasons why they weren't widely deployed on vista 1) performance on their hardware, 2) application compatability and 3) training both end users and support staff.  i demonstrated microsoft enterprise desktop virtualization (med-v) which addresses the biggest of the three issues (at least on current and new hardware - some companies have equipment that is well over 3 years old) and someone asked if the virtualized environment would have to start up after the "11 minutes it takes to boot vista".  ouch!  i don't know what system he's testing windows vista on, but i'd like to let him borrow one of my systems.  i just noticed on both a system with and a system without a solid state hard drive that both could give the impression of taking a while to start (that's the impression i'm left with and i'm the primary user!), but timing both of them, it takes windows vista less than 30 seconds to reach a logon screen and less than 30 seconds to logon, start up my applications and allow me to start doing things.  the laptops power on checks and pre boot processes in some cases add from 30 seconds to a minute to this time.  that feels to me like 11 minutes sometimes, but it's no where near.  on the system with the solid state hard drive (which also stays relatively cool - that's another post for another day!) i typically use standby which means my 30 seconds to logon + 30 seconds for startup is further shortened to unlock workstation and resume.

i've just begun testing windows 7 and one of the first things i've noticed is how my system feels snappy and quick again.  i'm not running anti virus, i don't have additional tools, programs and utilities and in the case of the installs i've done so far, i've reformatted the hard drive.  when you think about all the things that you do with a pc today, it's truly amazing.  i will eventually spend more and more time with windows 7 and use more and more programs and utilities on it and get used to the speed at which it runs.  then i'll become impatient with it and want it to be even faster when in fact it is fast.